A community isn’t built or befriended,
it’s connected by offering and accepting.
Community is affinity, identity, and kinship
that make room for ideas, thoughts, and solutions.
Wherever a community gathers, we aspire and inspire each other intentionally . . . And our words shine with authenticity.

What is the ultra-marathon of reflection?

It seems the best of us are searching for bandwidth … the time — at the same moment when we have the energy — to pull our best, long, deep thoughts together. The luxury of expanding into our work, our lives, and our dreams with that focus too often escapes us in the noise.

Here’s what Ben said . . .

Itâs helpful for me to think of concentration as a muscle. It has a finite supply of work it can do before it gives out.

I can walk up one flight of stairs easily, but after 10, my legs are starting to burn. After 20, I have to stop and rest.

Likewise, I can concentrate on an idea. At first, the idea is powerful, and thoughts come naturally. Slowly, I lose interest and my mind wanders. It becomes harder and harder to focus on the idea, and eventually, I have to stop.

Your bullets for âinteriorizing the mindâ remind me of a workout. The more I train, the better my concentration becomes.

Not long ago, I asked Pamir Kiciman about his ideas for a guest post. Pamir writes for Reiki Help Blog about practical spirituality. I wasn’t disappointed when his first response said, “I really see no content to help the person doing the biz, it’s all about the tech, biz itself, content, clients, selling, etc. . . . So my idea for your readers is a piece about being healthy at the desktop, some practical, easy-to-use self-enhancing methods to engender wellness for even better output.”

Take 5 minutes to do what Pamir suggests. I did.

Blogger Wellness
by Pamir Kiciman, BA, RM. CHt

Lay of the land

You’ve identified your niche, settled on a blog platform, know your categories, have a SEO strategy and have put yourself out there on the Live Web. Way to go! It’s fun, exciting and fast. Your blog has a clean design and nifty widgets, comments are coming in, people Digg your content and you feel legit.

You social network, your workspace is simple, you love the resolution of your LCD monitor and your chair is ergoncomfy. You’re ready for another day on Web 2.0, or rather the Web on steroids! There’s the Twitter notification, the new comment too and your buddy IMs, a potential client fills out your contact form. Meanwhile your lover texts you about dinner and romance.

Life is good. Or is it? You have nagging tension in your shoulders, your mouse hand hurts and you want to replace your neck. The next morning none of these are too noticeable. Well, at least until the fifteenth email. Then discomfort creeps in again.

After some time, you numb to the physical symptoms although they persist. Yet productivity drops. Your monitor doesn’t look so hi-def to your bleary eyes, and you feel lethargic, even resentful. You feel you don’t have a single original thought to contribute and everything is an effort.

You promise yourself to do something about it before it gets to this point next time, but when you scour the Web next to nothing comes up for desktop health. Until now. In fact the first page of results in Google returns links about getting your health record on your desktop. If you search ‘blogger wellness’ Google asks if you meant ‘blogs health’ because that’s a nice little category.

Antidotes to blogger stress

There’s a natural function of your body that is with you 24/7/365. This function takes place in its quiet way independently of you. It has a job to do and it doesn’t wait for you to show up. Thankfully. It follows a rhythm and doesn’t waver or hesitate. It comes in and goes out like a finely-tuned clock, and doesn’t expect anything. Selflessly it serves you, while you mostly ignore it.

Can you guess? It’s your BREATH!

Nature has so arranged it that the diaphragm will expand and contract on its own, oxygen will enter and carbon dioxide leave, the lungs will fill and empty keeping you alive. After all, during sleep you don’t notice your breath, why should you when awake? You have so many more important things to handle!

Have you ever watched a healthy baby breathe? See that little stomach go up and down? Notice how easy and natural it is for them. Their breaths are full, smooth not jerky, starting at the abdomen they breathe and fill the lungs. They exhale all the way. There isn’t any constriction or unusual noise in the breath.

This is the breath you’ve forgotten. This is the breath you put on automatic pilot. Your breath is the one friend that you can ill afford to take for granted. It doesn’t require a cell phone or e-mail. It’s free and loyal. It doesn’t argue back.

But breathing without awareness means you’re not getting half of what you could from this resource. The breath obviously brings oxygen into your body and takes carbon dioxide out. The action of the diaphragm massages the internal organs. Even these mundane benefits aren’t properly available if your breath is shallow or high in the chest, or if you catch yourself not breathing for a few seconds (it happens quite often!).

More than all the biological factors of the breath, what it really brings is the new in essence form. Undoubtedly there is more than nutrients, water, oxygen and heartbeat that sustains you. If you think about the longterm effects of stress, you realize that it sticks to your organs, muscles and mind long after the stimulus that created the stress is gone. When you breathe with awareness, you also replace old stuck energies of all kinds with freshness, and each conscious breath becomes a house-cleansing.

Five-minute Breathing

Recommended for daily use at your monitor, 3 times a day for 5 minutes each time.

Turn off your monitor & sound, as well as cell phone. Turn away from your monitor if you like.

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